The Strength and Beauty of Simple Compositions

What is it about a photograph that has a single strong subject within it that holds our attention?

A solitary subject in a landscape/scene can have such a strong presence. Free of other distracting elements within the frame, the viewer’s eye is not being forced to look at a lot of other things. The subject stands apart, strong in its singular place within the frame.

Yet when photographing nature, it’s not always that simple - no pun intended! Nature is sometimes rather chaotic, complex – and we face the challenge of simplifying our scenes to make them strong.

Here are a few ways simple can be achieved:

1. Include just one main thing. This is perhaps the easiest way to create simplicity. This leaf was floating on a very shallow pond, yet because of the angle I was to the water, I picked up mostly the blue sky and very little detail in the bottom of the pond.

   

   Another example of this, the unfolding water lily below. It helped that there was calm water in both of these.

   

2. Selective Focus. By keeping the background out of focus, the subject will stand in isolation of that background, as in this photo of a Malachite Kingfisher from Botswana. It’s not perfect, as that background left frond of papyrus is a tad distracting, but it’s acceptable to me, as the bird really pops with its colors.

3. Create space around your subject. In this image of the bison in a snowstorm, below, it was pretty easy to isolate it and have space around it so that the only thing you could ‘focus’ on is the bison. Nature helped out a lot in this case!

In the case of the snowy field and elm tree, below, there really isn’t a whole lot to study in the foreground, and certainly nothing distracting in the background. The soft snow bumps just fill in the space leading to the tree but don’t distract, leaving the composition simple. Snow is a great simplifier - it can cover up so many distractions in a landscape.

4. Use light to emphasize your subject apart from the surroundings. I call this the spotlight effect. The sun illuminated the lighthouse without adding too much to everything around it, and so the subject stands strong against and beneath that stormy sky.

Or, use contrast of light to make your subject stand out. By keeping a minimum amount of shoreline in the image below, both top and bottom, the emphasis is on this elk that was walking through Yellowstone Lake at twilight. It certainly stands out because of the lighter water color surrounding it.

If you do have a busier background that you’d like, with luck you may have smoke or fog to help minimize it and reduce the color of it. In the image below, wildfire smoke from mainland Alaska had drifted into the fjords we were exploring, making the background appear more like a serigraph to me. Soft layers, that allowed the one turquoise piece of ice to singularly stand out. Simple.

Take a look at your own collection of images to see where simplicity may have occurred without you even realizing it - or to see where by changing your approach or settings you may have been able to create more simplicity and impact.

Thank you for being here, and have a great weekend and week ahead!